I never, ever heard of a venue defrauding people, let alone 40. That’s a ton. I’m going to read what this says. A 42-year-old El Paso County man who was accused of selling more than a quarter of a million dollars in wedding services at his Black Forest venue is now facing separate civil litigation and criminal prosecution.
Wedding Venue Operator ARRESTED
Let us check it out. A 42-year-old from El Paso County is facing felony charges accused of taking money from couples wanting to use his black forest venue for weddings. Richard E. Reynolds is charged with defrauding 40 couples. The victims lived between Thornton and Pueblo. El Paso County Sheriff’s Office says Reynolds received more than $260,000 and didn’t provide any services in return. His charges include simple theft, criminal impersonation, and forgery.
In personation, forgery, forgery. Denver. Man, this is such a short video. I want to see if I can find more. So I am going to say, stay tuned. I’m going to see if I can find any more information about this El Paso venue that is being sued. All right, now here is video number two of that same El Paso man who was accused of taking a quarter of a million dollars. He’s accused of being the ultimate wedding crasher. A man in the Black Forest is facing some serious charges tonight.
Couples across the state accuse him of making off with tens of thousands of dollars after the venue they booked was suddenly shut down. Good evening. I’d like that drone to shoot more than $260,000 ripped away from 40 heartbroken couples.
That’s the accusation from investigators as they dig into the activities of a would-be venue operator in the Black Forest. So this situation that they’re explaining so far is not uncommon. It happens from time to time that a venue will book out a wedding and then decide to do renovations or something like that.
But it’s common to give back the money or to make other accommodations for the couples. You don’t just say, oh yeah, I know I took your money and now it’s on you. Go ahead and find another venue. Oh, by the way, I’m keeping that coin. Typically, you’re either going to give them a refund or you’re going to make concessions for them since you’re the one that breached the contract. Gary Dio, News Channel 13. Spencer Soeser joins us live now.
And Spencer, you spoke with a few couples who were hit hard by this alleged fraud. Pardon Heather. Richard Reynolds used to operate a wedding venue in the back portion of his property here in the Black Forest. But the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office says he ripped off dozens and dozens of couples before his property was shut down because of a zoning issue. Yeah, see, when people decide to get into the wedding industry, not everyone will do their research.
So it looks to me so far that this venue operator decided to host weddings and then started having these weddings and then found out that he was not able to do it for whatever reason. And instead of giving the clients their money back, he decides to go ahead and keep it to himself.
Here comes the money. $14,000. Almost 11,000. Caitlin Olsen and Melanie Francis have a lot in common. Both newlyweds along with their husbands were scammed out of thousands by this man, Richard Reynolds, who promised them an all-inclusive wedding venue in the Black Forest.
I love that drone shot there. It was a dairy discount because my husband, he’s a disabled veteran. And so we just gave him all the money. Reynolds, who is a registered sex offender, had weddings in the back part of his property in the Black Forest, but his business was shut down over zoning issues.
Instead of giving the money back for his book weddings after he was supposed to do the El Paso County Sheriff’s office said he pocketed it to defraud more than 40 victims. Yeah. That was our entire savings. And then, um, man, that’s terrible. The fact, I think the news story that they’re adding or the buzzword, the registered sex offender doing weddings in the back part of, I don’t know if that matters with him having a wedding venue.
I don’t think he has to disclose that to them. I’m not saying that you know, it’s not good to know beforehand. Don’t know if this person is required to tell anyone other than neighbors that they’re registered for that stuff. Uh, but I’m not a lawyer. Uh, and if I was, it wouldn’t be in that practice, but I want to keep on watching the video. Honey and Jared Francis didn’t realize they weren’t the only ones until recently.
They saw a Yelp review
They saw a Yelp review for someone who had lawyered up against Reynolds. And when we tried to contact him in January, he was ghosting us. And then that’s when he went on Yelp and found a Yelp review.
Olson saw the review too. They’re now part of a class action lawsuit against Reynolds. They’re both now happily married, but their weddings weren’t even close to what they dreamed of. This is money that we had to sprint and save and you know, make a lot of sacrifices so that we could have a beautiful wedding.
And then to have that just ripped out from under us, it was so stressful. I mean, it made me physically ill. Did he ruin your wedding experience? Oh yeah. Absolutely. There’s no question. It’s interesting that they, I guess, again, hashtag, not legal advice. I’m not a lawyer, just a guy who runs a company that likes to watch interesting stories about other wedding companies and share my two cents. But, interestingly, they have a class action against this Reynolds person because.
Being part of a class action means that you all share something in common against one particular defendant. So instead of each person hiring a lawyer, they all get lumped together as one defendant. So I don’t know how many it would be. I think they said it was 20 or 40 couples. So all 40 could have the same lawyer go against this Reynolds person. And if they win, then they would split the money awarded.
But with this guy, it’s gonna be the same thing that I mentioned in the other video. I’ll go ahead and put it up here. In the other video where the photographer won a million dollars against the couple, she sued the couple and won a million dollars, the big part is collecting.
You gotta be able to collect from this guy. He does have an asset because he has this estate that he was trying to do weddings. So you can put a lien on that, which means that if he tries to sell it, then they have to pay the lien off first before the sale can happen. So that would be probably their only recourse. And that was a pretty big property. Put it back up here. That was a pretty good-sized property. So I’m guessing it’s worth more than $250,000.
But then also because of all these criminal charges against them, then chances are it’s not just going to be the money that they paid. The person mentioned no $11,000 and $14,000. Well, a jury could award basically whatever they want with this. So let’s just say it’s a million bucks divided by, you know, those 40 people. So you’re able to do something like that if they get a judge or excuse me, if they get a jury trial. So that is interesting that they have a class action.
I like that they were able to do that because that’s, I’ve never seen that ever a class action against the wedding venue. Under us, it was so stressful. I mean, it made me physically ill. Did he ruin your wedding experience? You know, I said it before. Of course, he did. So that video had a little bit more than the other video. So it was able to first see a few of those defendants. We were able to find out that it’s going to be a class action against this wedding venue owner.
And that will be an interesting development. I tried to research and find more, but I only found these two videos. And it looks like this one was published in 2021. And subsequently, the other one was published nine months ago.
So this one is relatively new and chances of finding any updates on a case like this in nine months is going to be a little bit more difficult. But I will keep following this story and find out exactly what happened with this one because the fact that it’s a class action, I am intrigued.
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